all going to die, so what’s the point of getting attached? Why bother to love at all? It’s just going to end in death.”
She poked him in the chest with her finger. “If we don’t love, then we don’t live. You can live alone and be miserable, or you can love people, be happy while you have them. And even when they die, the grief and misery won’t last forever; it will be replaced by fond memories which will bring a small measure of happiness.”
Scott was silent for a long time. Then he smiled in the darkness. “You are a very smart woman, you know that?”
“Yes, I know,” she said smugly.
Scott laughed.
“It’s true,” she said. “I graduated with honors.”
“So did I.”
“Yes, but mine were higher.”
“Oh? And what, exactly, does that mean?”
“That you’re smart, but I’m smarter. You should defer to me when you’re unsure.”
He chuckled, then squeezed her hand.
He had intended to go straight back to the office, but Josie’s words changed his mind, and he made a detour to his mother’s house. He noticed his brother’s car was in the driveway, too.
“What are you doing here?” Josie asked, as he turned off the ignition.
“Doing something I should have done before Dad died.” He looked at her. “Will you back me up?”
She looked confused, but nodded. “Sure.”
He went to the front door—Josie following behind him—and knocked. His mother opened the door just a few seconds later. She stood with her arm outstretched, her hand barely touching the knob. She was as far away from him as she could be and still be holding the door open.
“Scott, what are you doing here?” she asked, sounding surprised to see him.
“Giving you an ultimatum.”
“What?”
“An ultimatum. I’m tired of being a pariah to my own family. Either you take me back and act like nothing’s changed—and you stop flinching away from me and refusing to touch me—or I walk out of your lives forever. I won’t have a family anymore.”
Scott’s brother, Brandon, walked up behind their mother. She and he exchanged worried glances.
“Scott, I don’t understand…” his mother said helplessly.
“I don’t know how much more simple I can make it. Love me, or I leave.”
“I do love you.”
“No, you don’t.”
Tears swam in her eyes. “Scott, how can you say that?”
“Because for the last two years, I’ve not been good enough to be in your presence.”
“Scott, honey, that’s not it at all.”
“Yes, that is it.”
“No, it’s not. It’s just that you’re not… safe. It’s not that I don’t love you….”
“I spend more time with Scott than anyone,” Josie interjected heatedly. “We work together—hell, we live together half the time—he bites me, we have sex—there’s really nothing much we haven’t done together, from one end of the spectrum to the other. And in all that time, I have never once been afraid of Scott. I’ve had a guy shoot at me and try to kill me, but Scott has never been a problem. He’s a good man and what you’re doing to him—the agony that you’re putting him through—is unconscionable. He can’t help the fact that he drinks blood to live, but he’s never let that stop him from being a good person. I just wish you all would put aside your prejudice long enough to see that.”
Scott was blown away by Josie’s impassioned speech. He practically had tears in his eyes just listening to her. He wasn’t exactly sure what he had done to merit having her in his life, but he sure hoped he could keep on doing it.
Scott’s mother looked at him anxiously, then glanced at Brandon—who looked equally unsure.
“Well,” he said, after a minute of tense silence, “what’s it going to be?”
“I… I need to think on it. You’re asking a lot.”
“I’m not asking a lot,” he said firmly. “And you’ve had two years to think about it and get used to the idea. So make up your mind right now. And you, Brandon,” he added.
There was a long moment of hesitation.
Episode 26 – Loved Ones
Scott sat in the passenger seat, sobbing all the way home.
Josie, on the other hand, was fuming. She had clearly bitten her tongue while Scott was at his worst, but as soon as he started to let up, she started in. The verbal tongue-lashing that she gave his family actually made him feel a little better.
She pulled the car into a parking spot directly in front of the office. “They keep hiding behind those children,” Josie said, repeating something she had said twice already, “but the girls didn’t seem afraid of you that night they actually let you into the house. And you’ve had Clarice twice a week for over a month. I mean, if you can be around your own child regularly, why should it be a problem to see your nieces once or twice a month?”
Scott pulled a plastic bag out of the pocket in the door and began picking up his mess. The floorboard littered with damp, balled-up napkins.
He still sniffed a little. “Like you said, it’s just an excuse.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“They make me feel like some sort of pedophile,” Scott said, his grief beginning to be replaced by anger.
“That’s exactly the way they’re acting.”
“When I get hungry, my first thought isn’t to bite people; I just walk to the fridge and get something—just like when I was human. I don’t feel an overwhelming desire to bite people.”
“Except around me,” Josie said with a slight smile.
“Yes, but that’s more from lust than real hunger. And, if you’ve noticed, I can show restraint; I’ve refused your offer of blood before. I’m perfectly capable of controlling myself.”
“I know. Excuse me for saying so, but your family is really thick-headed.”
He smiled a little. “Yeah.” He tied off the top of the plastic sack. “But it doesn’t matter now. I’m moving forward with my life and I’m only taking people with me who want to be with me.” He looked over at her and smiled. She returned it.
He tossed the bag in the trash can on the street, and he and Josie opened up the office for the evening. There weren’t any appointments scheduled, so they went into the basement to see his finished apartment
“Wow, this looks so nice, Scott,” Josie said, as they descended the stairs into his new living room.
“It does, doesn’t it?” he replied, equally amazed.
There was a proper floor—not just carpet on top of the dirt—and a wall separated the living area from the other half of the unfinished basement. The living room ran the width of the building and Scott’s couch and TV were on the far side, and nearest the stairs were the table and chairs. There were two bedrooms in either corner with a small bathroom in between.
In Clarice’s room, the brick walls had been left exposed, and they were painted a pale lavender. The other two walls were white and the carpet was a light gray. Overhead, the floor joists were still exposed, but they had been painted white. Despite the fact that it was in a basement, the room looked quite bright and cheery.
“Oh, this is great,” Josie said. “I can’t wait to see it with the furniture and everything.”
“That’s coming tomorrow.”
“I hope they get it set up before Clarice gets here, so she can see all of it at once.”
The bathroom was very plain. The walls—including the brick—were white and the cabinet and fixtures were all white as well.
Josie gave a little nod as she inspected it. “I can work with this.”
“What do you mean?” Scott asked, with a little trepidation. With the exception of putting furniture in Clarice’s room, he had thought the project was done.
“You can’t leave it plain like this.”
“Why not?”
“Because plain is ugly.”
“I thought plain was plain.”
&
nbsp; “No, it’s ugly.” She patted him on the shoulder in a rather condescending way. “I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry.”
“You know I broke the bank building this out, right?”
“Fifty dollars and I’ll have it looking great.”
He looked at her skeptically.
“Alright, thirty,” she bargained.
“Oh, alright,” he finally relented. She looked so pleased—and smiled so beautifully—he had to restrain himself from agreeing to give her fifty after all.
They went to look at his room next. In it, the brick walls had been left bare and the other two walls had been painted a deep red to match. The floor joists above had been painted white, and the carpet was a dark tan. His bed was already in it, and his clothes were hanging in garment bags from nails in the floor joists.
“Can I have fifty dollars to decorate your room?” Josie begged.
Scott got out his wallet and pulled a hundred dollar bill from it. It left him with a grand total of three dollars.
“Here,” he said, handing her the hundred. “That’s all I have, so you better make it stretch.”
She beamed and plucked it from his grasp. “You’ll be surprised what I can do with it.”
“I better be,” he said with mock seriousness.
Before she could retort, though, someone called out from upstairs. “Hello? Scott?”
Scott and Josie went upstairs. The city’s D.A., Mark Pitchett, was in the lobby.
“There you are,” he said, a grin sneaking on his face. “I didn’t interrupt anything, did I?”
Scott tried not to look embarrassed. “No. The contractors finished my apartment today, and we were having a look.”
“Oh?” Mark said, sounding almost hopeful.
“Do you want to see?” Scott offered.
“Sure.”
Mark and Scott took